In the press

Guy Watson started growing organic veg in 1986 on his family farm in Devon and set up the vegbox scheme in 1993, delivering to 20 local friends and families.

As demand grew, the challenge was to find a way of embracing it whilst sticking to what the vegbox scheme was all about – local growing and employment and a friendly, personal service.

The solution was to find other farmers who shared our ethos. We now have 4 Riverford farms, all growing, packing and delivering vegboxes locally (the original farm in Devon, plus Hampshire, Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire).

Between the 5 sister farms we now cover most of England and South Wales and deliver around 47,000 vegboxes each week.

Our vegboxes are on average 20% cheaper than supermarket organic veg.

Customers cite “freshness and flavour” as the main reason for buying from us.

Every week we give customers 8 seasonal recipes in a newsletter in their vegbox to help them use up every last leek.

We also offer a range of organic meatboxes, eggs, milk, bread and more.

In 2005 we opened the critically acclaimed Riverford Field Kitchen restaurant on our farm in Devon, with Jane Baxter as Head Chef.

In 2008 we published our first book, the Riverford Farm Cook Book, a mixture of farming tales and seasonal recipes co-written by Guy Watson and Jane Baxter.

In 2010 we launched our “Riverford Cooks” campaign to inspire people to cook from scratch using a vegbox. Riverford Cooks work in their local communities on everything from cooking lunches in people’s homes through to public cookery workshops and demos.

In Summer 2010 we took a travelling version of our Field Kitchen restaurant on tour in a giant yurt, serving up freshly-cooked seasonal produce in fields around the country.

We now also have a farm in the Vendée region of France, where we grow crops to fill our vegboxes during the British ‘hungry gap’ in late spring. Trucking them to the UK is roughly the same distance as travelling from the Fens to Devon.

In May 2011 we published our second cook book, Everyday & Sunday, which has seasonal recipes organised month-by-month, with the aim of getting the nation confident at cooking with seasonal food.